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According to the social ideals elaborated in most of our ancient sources, the lives of most Athenian women were spent mostly at home and indoors. This ideal, however, will have encompassed only a minority of the women of Athens, whether of citizen or metic status. For most women, like most men, however, were not sufficiently well-to-do to live without working; those who resided in the country would probably have shared in agricultural labour, and those living in town would have engaged in petty trade or kept shops with their husbands. Housekeeping, childcare, woolworking, and food preparation would not have occupied the majority of their working day. And even the group of Athenian men and women who were somewhat better off spent a significant part of their time engaged in religious activities: either performing private devotions within and without the home [ILL 15] or participating in the many festivals which were scattered throughout the ritual year. But many of our sources also afford us glimpses into the everyday family life of that group of prominent and well-to-do Athenians whose activities do accord roughly with a social ideal which claimed that 'man's job is in the fields, the agora, the affairs of the city; women's work is spinning wool, baking bread, keeping house'. [ILL 16] In Xenophon's Oeconomicus, for example, a treatise on estate-management, Socrates explains the fine points of the topic to his wealthy interlocutor by recounting his conversation with Ischomachus, a man who, he says, was regarded as a 'gentleman' by everyone, 'men and women, foreigners and citizens'. For Ischomachus, unlike others of his class, does not waste his wealth on hetaeras, boyfriends, gambling, or keeping bad company. Nor, on the other hand, is he a craftsman, whose occupation would leave him 'no leisure for friends and the affairs of the city'. Rather, Ischomachus is a wealthy landowner, whose holdings include several parcels of land worked by slaves under the direction of a foreman, whose work he supervises himself. Ischomachus' daily routine includes riding into town early in the morning, taking care of business there, and then walking back home while his slave leads the horse back to the farm. Then Ischomachus returns to the farm, rides out to the fields, inspects the slaves' work, and practices military manoeuvres for exercise. He walks back into town in time to arrive home for the mid-day meal. Like most men, Ischomachus had married at thirty, and took as his wife a young girl of fifteen. The marriage was arranged between the groom and the girl's parents, and both parties had been concerned to find the best possible partner for the purposes of household management and the begetting of children. The young bride had spent her early years under strict supervision 'so that she might see, hear, and speak as little as possible', and it thus falls to Ischomachus to train his new wife in her household duties. She, like he, was already schooled in modesty and self-control (sophrosynê), and both of them, he claims, possess equally capacities for memory and management in the general sense (epimeleia). Otherwise, the woman is designed by nature (physis) for indoor work (childcare, breadmaking, and woolworking), and the man for outdoor activity (ploughing, sowing, planting, and herding). The household, in Ischomachus' view, is ideally a partnership beneficial to both husband and wife: one to which she deposited her dowry, and he contributes his property and continued earnings. In order for the household to flourish, however, careful attention on both their parts is required. Ischomachus' wife will learn how to supervise the household slaves, guard the household provisions, budget expenditures carefully, and arrange for the household belongings to be stored neatly. [ILL 17] Ischomachus has the service of a foreman, and his wife will have a housekeeper to aid her in her tasks. She will spend her day walking about the house, supervising the servants' work, and inspecting whether everything is in its place. This, along with weaving, mixing flour, kneading dough, and folding clothes and linens, will provide her exercise, since the house is quite large and spacious. [ILL 18] Ischomachus' wife, he tells Socrates, is an admirable housewife, 'more than capable of managing everything indoors by herself'. He, for his part, is concerned to treat her well: for well-treated wives, he assures Socrates, become 'fellow-workers' in the task of improving their husbands' estates. Ischomachus thus regards marriage as a productive, reproductive, social, and sexual partnership: his wife supervises the household and keeps the household accounts [ILL 19]; she learns from him that she is more sexually attractive if she does not wear make-up [ILL 21]; she plays the part of the jury when he conducts mock trials at home; and she will assume responsibility for the nurture of the children that he hopes they will eventually have. [ILL 20] Ischomachus has friends with whom he associates, but he makes no mention of social life for his wife. And some tragic heroines complain that wives are forced to stay at home alone. But in the plays of Aristophanes and Menander, in orations and on vase-paintings, women are frequently in one another's company. One speaker in an oration reports that before his opponents brought suit against him, his mother and theirs used to be fast friends: 'they used to visit one another -- naturally, since they both lived in the country and since their husbands had been friends'. In another case, a speaker reports that he brought into the household his old nursemaid -- now a widowed freedwoman -- to serve as company for his wife, and in the oration they sit together in the garden lunching. Ischomachus' marriage is certainly a patriarchal one: his wife's authority in the home is delegated to her by him; and for all of her contributions to the economic well-being of the household, he regards himself as responsible for the estate's income: 'property comes into the house', as he says, 'through the husband's exertions; but it is dispensed through the wife's housekeeping'. In other respects, however, including that of their mutual affection for one another, the marriage of Ischomachus and his wife resembles the ideal which Odysseus celebrates the Odyssey:
It is a surprising irony that the Ischomachus and his wife of Xenophon's treatise were, in all likelihood, historical figures. He was born by 460 bce and married Chrysilla in about 435. They had a daughter who married a wealthy man, and who then, after he died, married Callias, a rich Athenian nobleman and notorious profligate. After less than a year of marriage, Callias brought Chrysilla into the house, and proceeded to live with both mother and daughter. The daughter, in despair, tried to kill herself, but was subsequently driven out of the house by her mother. Soon afterwards, Callias grew tired of Chrysilla, and threw her out, even though she was pregnant by him. When a son was born, Callias denied that it was his, but some time later he fell in love again with Chrysilla, 'the outlandish old hag of a woman', welcomed her back into his house and acknowledged the son as his own. Ischomachus, for his part, does not appear to have fared much better. Having been one of the wealthiest men in Athens known to us, his fortune upon his death was valued at less than one-seventh of its worth during his lifetime. (His property may have fared badly during the Decelean War of 413-404 bce.) This is perhaps only the most striking example of the discrepancy between social ideals and lived reality in ancient Athens. Other, less flamboyant or scandalous ones appear, however, as soon as we take into account the part that all women played in the city's and demes's religious life, the participation of most women in the ongoing economic activities of the town and country, and the contributions of even upper-class women to the prosperity of the household, which was the foundation of Greek social, political, and economic life. For if the polis of ancient Athens was from one perspective a 'male club', as is often claimed, then it is evident that it was also one in which many women enjoyed a kind of guest membership, and to which others, of the more prosperous classes, constituted an important and necessary 'women's auxiliary'. (责任编辑：admin) |